Qantas creeps forward with engineering job cuts
Jamie Freed
Published: August 5, 2014 - 11:43AM
Qantas has cut another 97 jobs in its engineering department as part of its broader program of 5000 job losses over three years.
The airline on Tuesday told 47 aircraft maintenance engineers in Sydney and Melbourne that their roles were redundant, although it has offered them the opportunity to apply for an equal number of vacant roles in Brisbane and Perth if they are willing to relocate.
Qantas has more demand for work in its Brisbane and Perth maintenance hangars than in Sydney and Melbourne as part of a broader restructure of its engineering department.
It also has less work in total as it retires ageing 767 and 747 aircraft.
Modern aircraft require less maintenance than older aircraft.
The airline has also told employees in engineering planning, administration and support that it plans to cut 50 positions in those areas. In the first instance, it will offer voluntary redundancies to mitigate the need for compulsory redundancies.
“We’ve been saying for some time that our engineering workload is reducing as we continue to retire older aircraft and introduce new aircraft which require less maintenance,” a Qantas spokeswoman said.
“The simple fact is we need fewer engineering employees as the workload reduces.”
In February, Qantas announced it would cut 300 line maintenance roles from both licensed aircraft maintenance engineers and aircraft maintenance engineers.
However, the airline said it had worked with employees and unions to reduce the number of compulsory redundancies through voluntary redundancies, job swaps and redeployment to other parts of the airline to offset the number of compulsory redundancies by 50.
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Qantas creeps forward with engineering job cuts